Tag: 100 rejections
Journal

7 Days ’til Worldcon

Man, I’ve been all over the place for the last week. Good stuff happened and bad stuff happened and my emotional state bounced around like one of those 20-cent rubber crazy balls you used buy from the machines out the front of the grocery store, but there was rarely a moment where stuff happened all on its own and demanded no real engagement on my part. Fortunately the last three or four days have trended towards the good rather than the bad, but I suspect any seven day period that starts with your parents ringing from the other side of the world and saying “we were almost killed in a car crash” is going to struggle to come out ahead on points. Still, among the cool stuff: – Doing edits and contracts for my short story, L’esprit de L’escalier, which will be coming up at Apex Magazine in the future. Astute readers may put two-and-two together and realise this was

PeterMBall 26/08/2010
Works in Progress

16 Days ’til Worldcon

And rejection 16 for the year arrived in my inbox this morning, which means there’s an outside chance that I may hit 20 rejections before the end of August.  I like those numbers, . They mean things are starting to pick a bit on the writing front, especially since eleven of this year’s rejections have arrived in the last three months. And, honestly, I was going to do a longer post on rejection and laziness and how nice it is to have the regular stream of people saying “no, not for us,” amid the occasional “yes, we like, we’ll take it”, but I’ve already wasted my hour of blogging time thinking of the right way to say it. Suffice to say that I love my rejections – they make me want to get back on the computer and belt out a new story – and now I have to go and write a bunch of words on the novel *without deleting

PeterMBall 17/08/2010
Works in Progress

The Writing To-Do list for 2010

Yesterday I sat down with the Spokesbear, a bunch of e-mail, my copy of Jeff VanderMeer’s Booklife, and a notepad to construct my to-do list for the rest of the year. It’s a habit I fell into a few years back (well, sans the Booklife part, but I suspect I’ll be rereading it often in July’s to come); those who’ve been following the blog for a while might remember the 80-Point-Plant for Awesomeness that resulted from last year’s state-of-the-union style gutcheck. Usually I’m pretty quiet about the results, but after reviewing my issues with last years list I’m going to go public with the writing portion of the process this year. It’s somewhat long. Sorry about that. If you want to skip it, I promise there will be more cat-sitting stories tomorrow. Some thoughts on the list before we kick off:      – There’s a large amount of background work that goes into the decision of  what to do with the

PeterMBall 22/07/2010
Works in Progress

Unleash the Frowns

The tenth rejection of the year came in this morning. After doing some quick research and resending the story, I went in to update my submission tracker (hint number one for writers: always update your submission tracker. Yes, right now). Then I spent about an hour making this face at the computer: Afterwards I went and sang Creep at the top of my lungs in the shower. It helped, although I suspect the neighbours now regard my off-key crooning of the line “I wish I was special” over and over as evidence that I may, in fact, be exactly that*. Now, to be explicitly clear, the frowny-face of doom wasn’t actually directed at my rejection (me, I love my rejections; it means I’m doing my job ). No, the frown was directed at the visual evidence that I’ve been letting things slide on the writing front for over a year, and it really was time to start picking up my game

PeterMBall 12/07/2010
News & Upcoming Events

Bleed available for pre-order

So yesterday the various forms of mail brought in my contributor copies of the new Horn layout, my ninth rejection of the year, and the following news: Bleed by Peter M Ball Cover art by Dion Hamill, design by Amanda For ten years ex-cop Miriam Aster has been living with her one big mistake – agreeing to kill three men for the exiled Queen of Faerie. But when an old case comes back to haunt her it brings a spectre of the past with it, forcing Aster to ally herself with a stunt-woman and a magic cat in order to rescue a kidnapped TV star from the land of Faerie and stop the half-breed sorcerer who needs Aster’s blood. Ten years ago Miriam Aster learnt a simple lesson: when a faerie asks you to kill someone, the worst thing you can say is sure. Today she’s about to learn that worse things can happen when the past refuses to stay behind

PeterMBall 07/07/2010
Journal

Things that Happened While I Was Otherwise Distracted

I’ve been distracted of late – either by trying to get the latest version of Cold Cases ready or hole-in-my-head drama depending of the day –  and I somehow managed to miss a whole heap of stuff happening around the traps. 1) The latest edition of the Terra Incognita Podcast is up, featuring me reading my story Black Dog: A Biography that came out in the Interfictions II anthology last year. Unlike most of the previous podcasts of my work this one actually involved me recording the reading myself, an experience that forced me to realise exactly how inarticulate I am in the verbal form (seriously; apparently I drop the consonants out of words and rely on vowel sounds and inflections to get things right, and we do not speak of how many times I had to restart things in order to avoid this). 2) Angela Slatter’s Brisneyland by Night is the feature story over at the Twelth Planet Podcast at the moment, which

PeterMBall 22/06/2010
Journal

Chaos and Rejection

It’s entirely possible that I’ll spontaneously combust at some point today. Somehow it’s become an intersection of deadlines, doctor’s appointments, social engagements and other madness that all needs to be done *now*. Naturally, I have a plan for getting everything done. Just as naturally, it’s all going to hell the moment I hit the doctor’s surgery. While I totally dig my local surgery, they’re often overbooked and the waiting times are haphazard. On the plus side, I seem to have moved past the nightmares where the stitches in my head split open and I bleed over my bed. Now the only thing waking me up is the stitches hurting when it gets really cold around 4 in the morning. In other news: the yearly rejection count hit 7 today, but this is counterbalanced by having the first new story sent out in a long, long while.

PeterMBall 14/06/2010
Works in Progress

2010 Rejection Count: 5

It’s been 36 dayssince I clocked up my first rejection of the year, but as the submissions start going out more regularly things are picking up. 5 rejections done, 95 rejections to go in order to hit my 100 for the year. Of course, I’m being completely pantsed by my friend Chris Green whose already doubled my total, but that’s because Chris is made of awesome while my primary composition is slackness. Mind you, I’m going to catch up. I just have to remember how to write a short story, since I seem to have fogotten (yes, again)

PeterMBall 16/05/2010
Works in Progress

Novella Death March: Day One

About ten hours ago I parked myself in front of the laptop and started rewriting Cold Cases. I came up for air a few times, primarily to check e-mail and eat cake, but otherwise I’ve had a pretty consistent day at the keyboard working on the novella. I’ve made a terrible mess of the story. Possibly seven or eight terrible messes, given the plethora of drafts littering my computer. This is the way rewriting goes in my neck of the woods. I fiddle with things. I break them and see what’s wrong. I look at a scene and wonder what the hell I was thinking, then hammer away at it until it starts to look a little better. Also, rewrote the first chapter. Like, heavy rewriting of the first chapter. And for the first time, I actually like the way it ends. The 2010 rejection count has hit 2. That means there’s just 98 rejections to go

PeterMBall 19/04/2010
Works in Progress

2010 Rejection Count: 1

Man, it’s been one of those weeks. You know the ones – you make a mistake early one, a really dumb one that was easily preventable if you’d had half-a-brain, and by Friday afternoon you’re at the bottom of a tailspin from hell where the world is a single chaotic mess and you get deep into the groove of wallowing in your own angst. Of course, by you I mean I. There’s a reason I avoid the internet on those weeks. History teaches us that no good comes from posting while engaging in massive acts of self-recrimination. Of course, history also teaches me that I have a habit of letting one mistake cascade into several in the same manner that this week did, so it’s not like I’m terribly good at learning things. Then I got a rejection letter today, which snapped me right out of it and got me focused.  There are a bunch of people who are going to

PeterMBall 10/04/2010

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